time.windows.com fixed

2007-04-23 16:28 time windows ntp

Well, it appears that time.windows.com is now fixed, after a few weeks of serving up invalid time. Presumably, the clocks on millions of Windows machines worldwide are now slowly drifting back into synchronization with the rest of humanity.

I find it rediculous that such a problem could go unnoticed and unfixed by Microsoft for so long, and that it took a Microsoft participant on a programmer’s blog reading about it to track down and correct the issue.

U:\>w32tm /monitor /computers:time.windows.com,us.pool.ntp.org  
time.windows.com [207.46.130.100]:  
    NTP: **+0.0541156s offset from local clock**  
        RefID: time-nw.nist.gov [131.107.1.10]  
us.pool.ntp.org [66.91.129.70]:  
    NTP: +0.0293621s offset from local clock  
        RefID: bigben.ucsd.edu [132.239.1.6]

Comments:

joeditt - Jun 1, 2007

It’s not just ridiculous, it’s impertinent ignorance of users - the monopolistic company’s standard policy.

And though MS support service costs an extra fortune, obviously showing the corporation regards itself not the least responsible for the operability of what you already paid for, that service mostly won’t help. MS’ oh so great generosity then refers you to user forums where you mercifully are free to endlessly plough through uncounted postings most of which an average user can’t understand. Though all the knowledge there’s due to skilled users who share their experiences with others, sometimes to satisfy their vanity, but mostly thanks to remarkable cooperativeness - in any case receiving no reward for their contributions from regrettably (whimper!) underpaid, needy MS (sob!).

Which is so impecunious that to the very day it is unable to even offer the time synchronization fix to its customers. Comprehensible, as those who might have the means and competence to spread the good news are too busy with other things that must be delivered by the automatic Windows updates, i.e. sensational new templates for MS Words fax and letter documents. No doubt it’s clearly the duty of self-exploiting folks like you to publish facts which are conductive to negligibilities like the system software’s operational reliability.

So whoever reads this, go donate a few Cents for poor Bill. Hanky, anyone?

Noticed a 4 minute or so lag on my machine running Windows XP. Hit the update now button… it synced, but didn’t correct the time. Checked the NIST and Greenwich sites to confirm the lag.

I changed my time server to time.apple.com and it works now.

Louis, time.windows.com looks okay to me at the moment:

U:\>w32tm /monitor /computers:time.windows.com,0.us.pool.ntp.org,1.us.pool.ntp.org  
time.windows.com[207.46.197.32:123]:  
ICMP: 68ms delay  
NTP: -0.0247374s offset from local clock  
RefID: (unknown) [0xCE83300A]  
Stratum: 3  
0.us.pool.ntp.org[209.67.219.106:123]:  
ICMP: 121ms delay  
NTP: -0.0236769s offset from local clock  
RefID: hatch.dayww.net [74.53.198.146]  
Stratum: 3  
1.us.pool.ntp.org[63.240.161.99:123]:  
ICMP: 15ms delay  
NTP: -0.0826970s offset from local clock  
RefID: time-a.nist.gov [129.6.15.28]  
Stratum: 2  

This is one of the reasons why the NTP folks at ISC recommened you choose multiple NTP servers, to protect against outages or temporarily incorrect clocks. I suggest everyone configure four separate severs: [0-3].pool.ntp.org. The NTP pool project now has over 1000 servers, and a geographic DNS system to point you to a server in your own country if possible.

Anybody look lately? My machine said it sync’d successfully at 11 AM this morning, shows 4:04PM when it’s really 6:18PM.
Huh?

@anonymous: I just checked a few minutes ago and it seems to be working fine. The offset is less than 20 miliseconds different than pool.ntp.org.